Using the
symbolism of the granaries which the Egyptians established to safeguard the
crops fed by the ever unpredictable Nile, Hohne notes the “healing journey”
that establishes an inner terrain of self-worth, that can be associated with
Isis. Feminine introspection overturns Seth, the god of the wasteland.
Isis seems to
represent inner belief in earthy sensuality as well as sexual desire (allied to
dirt). While Howard’s serpent-man and man-serpent represent the Stygian
wasteland of fire and fury that is ruled over by Seth (Set) and the repressed
energy of the snake, Horus and his mother Isis represent hope reborn and
fertility.
It seems
possible, then, that Howard’s Stygia is not so much Egypt as the wasteland of
the mind that holds repressed energy in the form of a snake. That land is
actually much closer to our own than it is to ancient Egypt. In order to bring
forth the reborn child Horus (A Child is Coming) and the goddess of feminine introspection
and fertile terrain – inner reflecting the experience of outer – our world has
to imagine a modernday Nile.
Meaning something that is earthily sensual and associated with dirt and
fertility. The wide open ranges, cowboys and herds, or the Indians of Allegheny
(prev.)
Out would go the hygiene-machines of vast beef-lots and factory-farmed
chickens etc; and in would come the more happy-go-lucky atmosphere of dirt and
cleanliness (moral or Mosaic Law). This is a fertile atmosphere and hence
associated with Isis.
Hohne identifies Isis with Maat, or “the way” (inner worth). The outer
sensual world of work and the inner sense of worth are strongly connected. This
atmosphere tends to assert the energy of reptilian anxiety, or at least gives
it a means of expression. Reptilian energy, in out modernday mind, is
identified with the way our outer world is fantastically over-ordered and like
a logical brain.
This is another way of saying order doesn’t exist, since our
unconscious universe is reptilian at a primitive level (Pictorial 1).
This brings us naturally to the Greeks, who brought in detached logic and
Aristotelian syllogisms to a universe that was actually full of the misdirected
urges of omnipotent gods and goddesses (The House that Rand Built 2).
Hohne makes the point that logical games inhabit a strange detached
labyrinth of the mind, away from feeling, while the Sophists believed truth was
unattainable. The difference with us is the Greeks exercised logic of the
brain, whereas we live IN a logic of the brain.
This is the fallacy at the heart of modernity since, as she points out
(page 70), Greek studies
In trying to understand the true nature of
the universe still remain a mystery today. When we go out to measure the fabric
of life, we find we somehow participate in
the measurement by affecting the result.
She uses the myth of Prometheus to personify the scientist, who
develops a fire of the mind while denying gut feelings as primeval throwbacks.
Prometheus’s punishment was to be chained to a rock and have an eagle eat his
liver every day, only for it to grow back overnight, and the cycle to repeat.
She likens this not only to the “sugar rush” of an addict, but also to
the hiding place of the scientist –
a mountain of thought in a world of
puzzles.
The point of the eagle daily devouring the liver is “escaped” by mental
processes. This is the reality of mortality, which like Icarus who “thought he
was invincible”, melts and we come face to face with death.
This is the cyclical world of disorder, symmetry and proportion that a
scientist can never feel, in their logical labyrinths of the detached minds. In
this altered state, they resemble the depersonalised characters of Greek myths
who are turned into inanimate objects.
Daphne is pursued by Apollo and is
changed into a laurel tree. Arethusa is pursued by Alpheus and becomes a
spring, while Alpheus changes into a river.. (page 68)
The mind, unlike the body, is not active, not like the eagle on a dive,
not muscular and lithe, not graceful and pirouetting. In its labyrinth, its
detached logic denies it the chance to see and feel the pirouettes of birds in
trees, the lowing of cows at sundown, any of the rhythmically physical things
that constitute the simple reality of balance and proportion on Earth.
While the Greeks only exercised logic, keeping all their rural pursuits
intact, modernday scientists have – like Blake’s print of Newton (Pictorial
59) – transmuted the mind into this land (body) of inertia we inhabit. The
arid wasteland of Seth where anxious reptiles are daily attracted to the order
of the artificial brains (algorithms) of Musk and Bezos, who seek to entice us
from heroic bodies that exist in balance with self-governing minds, on the
hunts and ranges of the mind.
Weird Science
Weird Science
"The People's Choice" (Orlando art)
